If You See Crazy, Report Crazy

Coverage of the presidential candidates is disparate and dangerous

Credit: Getty Images

First, let’s get something straight. The 90-minute political event airing Thursday night on CNN is not a debate. It is a joint appearance by two candidates running for president. A debate would be wonderful. I would welcome an actual debate, which is a discussion between opponents in which rival arguments are put forward directly. That is not what you will see on Thursday night, should you choose to watch. You will see two men answer questions, if we are lucky, in a kind of a dual press conference and television show. I’m pretty certain one will answer the questions. The other? It’s anyone’s guess.

Now, let’s talk about expectations. The MAGA media universe, with an assist from the mainstream media (more on that later), has been working overtime to paint Joe Biden as a senile old man who doesn’t have the mental capacity to be president. 

The problem with this strategy is that the bar is now so low for Biden that if he just walks on stage and waves he will have exceeded expectations. The right-wing media has painted themselves into a corner and is now thrashing to get out of it. 

To do so, Fox “News” and Donald Trump himself are telling anyone who will listen that the only way President Biden will be coherent is if he is “jacked up” on medical supplements. Trump even mentioned cocaine. I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence. A former president of the United States has accused the current president of taking illegal drugs. And that is not front-page news.

The expectations for Trump aren’t much better. If past is prologue, we have a pretty good idea of how he will perform. In an op-ed in today’s New York Times, Hillary Clinton described what it was like to appear on a “debate” stage with Trump.

“I know the excruciating pressure of walking onto that stage and that it is nearly impossible to focus on substance when Mr. Trump is involved. In our three debates in 2016, he unleashed a blizzard of interruptions, insults and lies that overwhelmed the moderators and did a disservice to the voters who tuned in to learn about our visions for the country.” 

In the ensuing eight years, we have seen actual evidence of cognitive decline in Trump. Recently it has been more of a plummet. His extemporaneous speeches have become a mishmash of incoherent tangents. Calling it word salad would be a disservice to lettuce.

His recents rants have included confused musings about sharks and electrocutions, at the same time. At a Philadelphia rally on Saturday, he started talking about water. 

“You ever try buying a new home and you turn on – you want to wash your hair or you wanna wash your hands – you turn on the water and it goes drip, drip,” he said. 

The solution to not enough water is rain, he explained. “There’s so much water, you don’t know what to do with it. You know, it’s called rain. It rains a lot in certain places … There is a problem. They don’t want you to have any water. They want no water.”

At this point Fox, which was airing the speech live, cut to commercial. That may have been their programming plan all along, but considering Trump is ratings gold for the cable channel, the more likely reason is that they were protecting the convicted felon/presumptive presidential nominee from himself. 

Many say it is just Trump being Trump. No. Not any more. 

“In 2016, Trump said outrageous things at his campaign rallies to be entertaining. In 2024, his tangents raise serious questions about his mental fitness,” according to The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson.

Robinson went on to suggest that if President Biden had gone off on illogical diatribes about hand-washing or shark attacks, it would have led every broadcast and headlined every newspaper, questioning his mental stability. Congress would have called for hearings.

But Trump’s behavior has become so normalized that outlets like the Times and the Post sometimes fail to even mention nonsensical blatherings like the ones at the Philadelphia rally. 

Speaking of the mainstream media and coverage of the candidates: A case study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania concluded that “the choice of the Times to publish almost three times as many articles about Biden’s age as about Trump pulling the US out of NATO represents a clear example of biased coverage.”

Back in February, special counsel Robert Hur declined to indict Biden over classified documents he had removed from the White House while vice president. But Hur — a lawyer, not a doctor — said he found Biden a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Here’s how the Times covered it, according to the UPenn study: “During the week that the Special Counsel’s report came out, we examined the top 20 articles on the Times’ landing page every four hours. In that time, they published 26 unique articles about Biden’s age, of which 1 of them explored the possibility that Trump’s age was of equal or more concern.” Meanwhile, Trump’s threat to withdraw from NATO and “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” garnered only 10 unique articles in that timeframe. Ending 75-plus years of a military alliance and jeopardizing world stability? No big deal.

The New York Times is a great journalistic enterprise, one of the world’s best. But how can we allow the normalization of Trump’s behavior? It should be called out. Every time. If Trump is barking at the moon, report it, broadcast it. News organizations may be tired of the craziness, but we voters are not.  

If nothing else, being able to evaluate both men on a stage together at Thursday evening’s joint appearance will be a welcome relief from all the noise. One, or maybe both of them, could surprise us.

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Stay Steady,
Dan